On both sides, i.e. for download and installation parts, WSUS Offline Update uses Microsoft's update catalog file wsusscn2.cab to dynamically determine the required patches. This catalog file contains at least all the updates classified as "critical" and "security relevant", but it does not necessarily contain all "important" and "optional" ones.

Compared with other competitors, the great advantage of this solution is that no one has to maintain statical download/installation lists, so you may be up to date with your update repository immediately after a Microsoft "patch day", without having to wait for a new release of WSUS Offline Update.

The disadvantage of this implementation is that computers updated by WSUS Offline Update will hardly ever completely satisfy Microsoft's Online Update afterwards, but the patch coverage does completely satisfy Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer, and you also may add any optional update of your choice to both download and installation parts using statical definitions.

Furthermore, as WSUS Offline Update uses "Windows Update Agent" (WUA) to determine the patches to install on client/target side, there won't be any way to support deprecated systems like Windows 95/98/ME and NT.

As a conclusion one has to state that WSUS Offline Update is not a complete replacement for Online Update, but it's not meant to be!The main goal of WSUS Offline Update is to quickly and safely bring freshly installed Windows systems to a patch level which allows them to be safely connected to the Internet. From this point of view, even the Office part of WSUS Offline Update is a "goodie".

Regards & a happy New YearTorsten Wittrock

Last edited by WSUSUpdateAdmin on 15.01.2015, 11:36, edited 4 times in total.
Reason:MBSA v. 2.3 (12.11.2013)